


Crossbones

by Baylor



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Demonic Possession, F/M, Family, Hunting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 22:54:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/932049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baylor/pseuds/Baylor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of 1973 portrayed in the Season 4 episode "In The Beginning," Mary introduces John to the world of hunting. They set out to stop the demon hunting their family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Last Kind Deal

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written in December 2009/January 2010, before "The Song Remains The Same" aired, so not everything lines up with that episode.
> 
> Podfic available [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/941259).

The day they buried Mary’s parents, she sat John down at her kitchen table and told him that her family hunted monsters.

John dismissed it as a strange confusion caused by the sudden, violent death of her mother and father, but then Mary began unlocking and opening the locked and closed doors in the Campbell household, and taking out weaponry and tools that John had no idea rested behind those innocuous doors. Then he began to fear that this was no momentary confusion, no grief-inspired delusion, but a lifelong aberration, a sick and dangerous family fantasy that perhaps had led in some way to her parents’ deaths.

When Mary told him that a demon, not a burglar, had killed her parents, he took her hands and told her that they were going to get her help. Mary was young, and with her parents and their influence gone, John was certain that treatment, therapy, medication – something – could save his Mary.

Mary’s eyes were clear and steady and blue and not at all what John thought crazy-eyes should look like. He’d seen crazy, in the eyes of the enemy, in the eyes of his brothers-in-arms, and it didn’t look like this, but maybe that was because Mary’s crazy went so far beyond the brand caused by the horrors of war.

“Come with me,” Mary said. “Come with me and let me show you, and if you don’t feel differently, then I’ll get whatever help you think I should have.”

John could never tell Mary no, so he went with her to Oklahoma, where they met up with a dusty old guy with bad teeth named Franklin. The Impala followed Franklin’s battered pickup down country roads that led to country lanes that led to a dirt path. Mary armed John with a shotgun, but she and Franklin took pistols, and loaded them with what John could swear were silver bullets. 

They led him off the path and into the brush under the light of the full moon, and John didn’t think he’d been so scared even in the jungle. He didn’t know if it was Mary and the old man he feared, or something darker and older and deeper.

They waited.

John thought at first it was a man, and he opened his mouth and raised his arm to stay Mary and Franklin, but they were already out of the cover, and Franklin was yelling at the man, the man who ran wrong, who moved wrong, who looked wrong, and the man – thing – turned and charged and Mary came at it from the other side and shot it right in the chest. 

The man – thing – fell to the ground. 

Mary held out her hand. “Come here, John,” she said. “Come and see.” He went to her.

The thing on the ground was a man and not a man. It was still alive, taking strangled, bloody gasps through an open mouth that revealed curving, dangerous teeth. Its clawed hands scrabbled at the ground.

Franklin raised his pistol and shot it through the heart, and it was still. Then it changed, and John fell back on the ground in horror, raising a hand to the sight, because the thing was now a man, a dead man in the forest, when a moment ago it had been a creature, and his mind could not make sense of it.

Mary grabbed his hands and pulled them away from his face. “Look, John,” she said, and he did, because he knew what he had seen. 

“A werewolf,” he said, and looked at Mary, and she nodded. “A monster,” he said, and Mary nodded again. 

He sat trembling on the ground. Mary squeezed his hands and said, “Betcha wish I was just crazy, huh?”

They were silent all the way back to Lawrence. At her parents’ house, John showered and then lay down on the couch and fell into a black sleep. He woke at dawn and made coffee and sat at the kitchen table until Mary woke up and came downstairs to sit across from him. She reached out her small hands and tentatively touched his hands, wrapped around the cold coffee mug.

“John?” she asked, and she sounded so scared, so alone. John pulled his gaze from the kitchen wall and looked her in the eyes.

“Why did you show me this?” he asked. She tightened her fingers around his, and told him.

She finished, and the only sound in the kitchen was the gurgle of the coffee pot and the ticking of the clock. John studied the wall again for a good, long time before looking back to Mary. Her eyes were still clear and steady and blue, but they were also frightened.

“What do we do?” he asked, and relief and love washed over Mary’s face, and her hands tightened around his. She squared her shoulders and set her mouth, and damn, John never wanted to get in the way of this woman, because he wouldn’t stand a chance.

“We find it, and we kill it,” she said with resolve. “And we’ve got 10 years to get the job done.”

John nodded. He stood up.

“Let’s go,” he said. “We’ve got work to do.”

* * *

1973 went by too fast.

The minutia of life took up a lot of it. There were the Campbells’ affairs to settle, and the house that Mary would not stay in to sell. John was still working in his father’s garage, and Mary got a part-time job at a florist to cover the bills until the house sold. 

Throughout it was training. After Marine boot camp, John had been hard-pressed not to laugh when Mary said she needed to get him into shape, prepare him for the things they would be facing. 

He was glad later that he hadn’t laughed at her, because then it might have been even worse.

They told his dad they wanted to see America, and John guessed his old man must have thought Mary was going stir-crazy in the house where her parents died, because he let them take off on their road trips without too much grumbling. 

They did ruck-walks in the mountains, then ruck-runs. 

They tracked wild animals through the bush for days, then tracked human animals through the city for days. 

They climbed rocks, they climbed trees, they climbed the sides of flat, smooth buildings.

John learned to pick a lock, chant in Latin, use a machete, make silver bullets.

He dug grave-deep holes until his time was less than an hour. 

He learned how to destroy a ghost, a vampire, a werewolf, a wendigo, a shapeshifter. 

Through it all, Mary could still kick his ass.

She didn’t have much knowledge of demons, though, to John’s surprise. In fact, she said she didn’t think her parents had ever encountered one before. So far as Mary knew, there was no way to kill one, but, she said, that didn’t mean a way didn’t exist.

Demons could be sent back to hell, but they could escape again. But before they could do anything – kill it, exorcise it, anything – they had to identify it, and then they had to find it. It almost made killing it seem like the easy part.

None of the hunters that Mary knew had ever tangled with a demon, either, and John wondered just how big of a mess they were in, and if it was part of a larger, more horrific design. He didn’t say these things to Mary, who was ragingly determined and horrifically terrified. She was fearless and scared and tough and fragile and not at all the girl John thought he’d known, but she was always the woman he loved.

* * *

In 1974, she finally married him, saying it looked like she couldn’t scare him away so she might as well. The house sold and they stashed away the money and found a crappy little apartment. John offered to do some fixing up for a discount on the rent, and then he mixed salt into the caulk and weatherized all the doors and windows.

That was also the year they met Jim Murphy. 

He was still Father Murphy when they went to see him, but by the end of the year he’d lost that title and told them to call him Jim. John started calling him Pastor Jim, because he figured the man would never stop tending the flock, no matter what Mother Church might say about it.

Mary read newspapers from around the country in the local library, which was how they found Jim. Mary had surreptitiously torn the article out of the _St. Paul Pioneer Press_ and brought it home to show John. The next weekend, they piled into the Impala and headed north.

“That poor child was possessed, without doubt,” Jim told them over coffee at a little diner. They’d been turned away at the church offices, told that Father Murphy was under the Bishop directly now. Somehow, John and Mary didn’t think it was a promotion. They were turned away again at the Diocese offices, but a two-day stakeout finally proved successful, and they trailed him out of sight of the cathedral before approaching him.

He tried to refer them to a local parish at first, and was walking away when Mary said, “It killed my parents, and John, and so I made a deal.” Jim stopped, his back to them, then slowly turned and said, “Well.”

Several years earlier, Jim had published a fact vs. fiction paper about demonic possessions and Church practices and beliefs. That is what had led a desperate Frank Herndon to seek him out. 

His little girl was possessed, a maniacal Frank insisted. She’d changed overnight from a loving and ordinary, if somewhat fanciful, child into a vicious, cunning thing that held their house in fear. “I’m your daughter now,” the child would sing-song to her parents as she killed backyard animals. 

Jim thought the child must be mentally ill, and indeed, that’s what all the doctors told the Herndons – some type of early onset schizophrenia, or split personality disorder. But he agreed to visit their house, thinking if he could convince the Herndons that Becky wasn’t possessed, that then they would seek proper medical help for her.

They lived in an ordinary little suburban house. A pink bicycle with sparkly streamers flowing from its handlebars lay in the front yard. It smelled like cookies inside, and they found Mona and Becky in the kitchen, making chocolate chip cookie bars. 

Becky turned brightly when Jim entered, and said with great cheer, “Oh, I wondered when they would bring a priest!” Then, with eyes of pure black, she picked up the knife her mother had been cutting the bars with and rammed it hilt-deep into her own gut.

“I tried to call someone for help,” Jim told John and Mary. “No one picked up at my parish, and the man I got on the line at the diocese thought I was drunk. I was on my own, and mind you, one paper does not an expert make.”

Holy water burned the child, and she screamed until the windows rattled in their frames at prayers or the name of God. But really, Jim said, it wasn’t at all like _The Exorcist_. Aside from these things, Becky remained, on the outside, an ordinary child right up to the end. 

“She knew everything about us,” Jim said, “and she was cruel, revealing our darkest acts and thoughts to the light with a kind of horrific joy. And all of it in this sweet child’s voice, that giant red stain on her shirt slowly blooming. We thought maybe we could still save her, if we could get it out, take her to a hospital.”

“Why didn’t you just take her with it in her?” John asked, trying to keep judgment out of his voice.

“We couldn’t approach her,” Jim said, and John remembered Mary talking about how the demon that had killed her parents could stop you dead in your tracks and pin you. 

They finally filled the bathtub, and Jim blessed the water. Then they took a bucket and threw it on Becky, and while she was distracted, steaming and thrashing and screaming, “It burns, Mommy, it burns, make it stop, help me!” Jim and Frank picked the child up, put her in the tub and dunked her.

The water actually boiled, and Jim showed them faint, still healing scars where his hands had blistered.

They held the child down it the tub, and Jim did the exorcism. When he finished, there was a tub of cold water and a dead child inside of it.

Mary put her hand over her mouth and went outside. Jim and John could see her pacing on the sidewalk.

“What’s going to happen to you?” John asked as he watched Mary out the diner window.

Jim shrugged. “Defrocked, for certain. I’m hoping they won’t excommunicate me, but that’s possible too,” he said. “They don’t think I killed her, certainly, but they think she was a mentally ill child, and I supported the parents’ delusions to the point that they delayed medical care in favor of an unauthorized exorcism and the child ended up dead.”

“What are you going to do then?” John asked, turning back to him. The bell above the door jingled as Mary came in and sat back down, calm but clenched.

Jim gave them a wry little smile. “It seems I’m going to hunt demons,” he said, and John nodded, because, really, what else was there for Jim to do now?

* * *

Jim introduced them to research and demonology, Church teaching and rituals, Latin and exorcisms. For John, a solid B high school student who had never looked to college, it was a lesson in patience with himself, and a hard-learned one.

Mary, on the other hand, seemed to absorb everything Jim taught her at first pass, and the knowledge only fueled her desire for more knowledge. 

“We aren’t going to be able to behead, or burn, or shoot this thing,” she would say to John. “This,” and she slapped her hand on a heavy, dusty relic of a volume, “is how we’ll beat it.”

John, knowing she was right, would keep trudging away at his Latin.

* * *

In 1975, John began studying weather patterns, and by its end, he knew more than the meteorologist on the local news. He also knew that across the country, there was no sign of demonic activity. Looking back at 1973, though, there were signs everywhere. The demon had been busy.

It was hard to narrow down its focus, though. Even if they could pinpoint the demon’s activity to a town, to a neighborhood, even to a block, there were still dozens of people who may or may not have made a deal.

Mary was the one who thought to start asking about people who’d had unusual luck, or a big change in circumstances, in 1973.

In Oklahoma, a man had been killed when his car stalled out over the tracks while a train was coming. Witnesses said it looked like he had been trying to get out, but his seat belt was stuck. 

His widow was still grieving, but his two teenaged daughters would not meet their eyes. “He loved the girls so much,” their mother sobbed, and the girls flushed and flashed a look at each other. 

The younger one looked bewildered when asked if they’d spoken to anyone about needing a change in their life just before their father’s death, but the older one clenched her jaw and looked away, stammering that she didn’t know what they meant.

In Michigan, a young couple had slammed into a tree on an icy night. The woman had been thrown free, but the man had gone through the windshield. No one knew how he could have survived, but he’d recovered without a scar to remember it by.

A miracle, he called it, and he believed it. The woman’s eyes filled with tears and she’d looked away. She wouldn’t cop to a deal when they got her alone, but ran from them, crying.

In Illinois, Susan Franklin made no bones about her deal.

“My mother was dying,” she told them as they walked down her neat suburban street. “He offered to save her. Of course I took the deal.”

“What did you promise him?” Mary said, and Susan shrugged.

“He wouldn’t say,” she said. “Said he’d be by in 10 years to collect, but it wasn’t anything I’d miss. Said I might not even notice.”

“That wasn’t a doctor, you know,” John said, and Susan rolled her eyes.

“I’m guessing fae or some kind of demon,” she said matter-of-factly. “But he didn’t want my soul, so whatever it is, I can live with it. More than my mother could live with a slow, painful death.”

She didn’t want their number, so they left.

Mary was quiet on the drive back to Kansas. They were nearly through Missouri when she said, “Do you think I’m going to hell?”

John pulled off the road and parked on the shoulder. “You didn’t sell your soul, Mary,” he said, turning to look at her. 

Mary stared out the windshield at the flat highway ahead of them. “I made a deal with the devil,” she said flatly. “I’m thinking that’s a big black mark on my ledger.”

John didn’t know what to say to that, because she was right, but he couldn’t imagine his Mary – his wonderful, loving, obstinate, brilliant, good Mary – going to hell. “Maybe you should talk to Jim,” he said, because regardless of what the Church had said in the end, Jim was still a priest to John. 

“You have to be sorry to gain absolution,” Mary said, and finally looked at John. “And I don’t know that I am, that I would take it back if I could. I can’t imagine being here without you, John.”

He didn’t know what to say to that, so he just put his hand over hers.

* * *

In 1976, they fought. They fought every evil thing they could track, and they fought each other.

They killed a wendigo in Minnesota, and Mary locked John out of the motel and he slept in the Impala.

They cleaned out a vampire nest in Arkansas, and John left Mary at a bar in Pine Bluff and didn’t turn back around for her until Little Rock.

They killed a siren in Chicago, and screamed at each other in the hotel until management knocked on the door. 

They fought in the apartment, they fought in the Impala, they fought at the shop, they fought on the job, they fought in bed. They fought so much that John started to think Mary wanted him to leave, wanted to punish herself, or save herself, or punish him, or save him, and drive them apart, but John was a stubborn bastard. He dug his heels in, so they just kept fighting. 

They fought until John couldn’t stand the sound of Mary’s voice anymore, so he flipped on the radio and that godawful hippie Sonny and Cher were singing that stupid song, but John turned it up anyway.

Mary reached out and viciously twisted it off, and John cooly twisted it back on without looking at her. 

“Goddamn it, John!” Mary shrieked from the passenger seat, red with fury. “You hate this stupid song!” and so John started singing along.

_I got flowers in the spring,  
I got you to wear my ring._

“John,” Mary screamed, and she was so angry now that she was crying. John sang louder.

_And when I’m sad, you’re a clown,  
And if I get scared, you’re always around._

Mary twisted in her seat and began slapping at John’s shoulder, angry, open-handed slaps that stung and made the Impala shimmy. 

_Don’t let them say your hair’s too long,  
‘Cause I don’t care, with you I can’t go wrong._

“Stop!” Mary screeched, so John turned it up, grinning.

_Then put your little hand in mine,  
There ain’t no hill or mountain we can’t climb._

And suddenly Mary was laughing, still crying and red-faced and slapping at John. “You’re such a stupid idiot,” she yelled at him, and she was beautiful, angry and frustrated and sniffling and laughing. “I hate you, John Winchester.”

He smiled wider and sang louder, and then she was singing with him, loud and off-key.

_I got you to hold my hand,_  
I got you to understand,  
I got you to walk with me,  
I got you to talk with me. 

They barreled down the highway, fighting and laughing and loving and singing.

_I got you, babe._  
I got you, babe.  
I got you, babe. 


	2. Just the Right Bullets

In 1977, Jim heard of a man in South Dakota named Bobby Singer, and the three of them drove up to find him.

Singer looked to be in his late 30s or early 40s, and he ran a salvage yard adjacent to his old country house. Both Singer and the house looked like they had once been well-cared for, but now they were getting frayed around the edges.

He almost sent them packing, but as he started to shut the door, Jim said, “Mr. Singer, please, this is John and Mary Winchester and I’m Jim Murphy and we want to ask you about –”

The door came back open, and Singer looked Jim up and down. 

“So you’re Jim Murphy, huh?” he asked, and scratched his beard. “I was lookin’ for you, a while back. Sorry to hear the Church gave you the boot.”

Jim blinked in surprise. “Thank you,” he said, then hesitated, now leery himself. John slid his hand inside his jacket and quietly thumbed the safety off his gun. “Why were you looking for me?”

Singer had a steady, open face, and he was careful with his motions, keeping his eyes on Jim, which told John he knew just where his hand was. “Thought you might could use some help,” he said, “but I guess you went to ground. Good idea, too, after that exorcism. Don’t know what might have come looking for you.”

Jim smiled wearily. “I think the Church has done all the damage she can to me,” he said mildly, and Singer gave a short, grim bark of a laugh.

“Ain’t the Church I’m worried about,” he said, and invited them in.

Singer poured them shots and grabbed them beer, and then Jim blessed the tap water and they all took a slug of that before sitting down at Singer’s kitchen table. 

“Worried you might have demons on your ass,” Singer said, after tossing back the whiskey shot on the heels of the water. He cracked open his beer. “They know you now, and they hold a grudge. Went over to St. Paul couple years ago, and from what I gathered, you sure stepped in something you weren’t aiming for. Good way to end up dead, or worse.”

Jim cleared his throat, fidgeted with his whiskey shot, cleared his throat again and then downed the shot.

“Need another?” Singer asked placidly, and Jim shook his head.

“I’ve been traveling, staying with friends, family,” he said. “It didn’t occur to me that anyone, or anything, might be looking for me.”

“It better occur to you now,” Singer told him. “Maybe you been lucky, but luck don’t hold.”

Jim tipped his head in acknowledgment. Singer nodded back, then turned his keen eyes on John and Mary. “And what’ve you brought with you?”

John, whiskey still burning its way down, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “John Winchester,” he said, “and my wife –”

“I’m Mary Campbell,” Mary cut him off. “I’m Samuel and Deanna’s daughter.”

Singer stared at her, then pulled off his trucker cap and ran a hand over his head. 

“Ah, honey,” he said in a gruff, kind voice, “I’m sorry.”

Mary nodded, and if her lips quivered ever-so-slightly, her eyes were clear. “Let’s talk demons,” she said.

* * *

Susan Singer was an anthropology professor at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion. The photograph on Singer’s mantle was of a woman with a heart-shaped face and intelligent eyes, the smallest touch of sass to her smile.

They’d known each other since they were kids, Singer said, taking down the photograph and lightly touching his fingers to it, went to school together, but then Susan had headed off to college and he’d become a working man. His friends all got married and settled down, but he’d never found a woman to suit, and it didn’t bother him none. 

One day he turned the aisle in the local grocery and there she was. They stood in the store and talked for two hours, and he left with her phone number. He went home and sat on his couch and looked at the piece of paper, wondering how long he had to wait until he could call her. However long it was, it was too long.

Susan’s mother was sick, so she’d left her teaching position at the University of Lawrence – “Your stomping ground,” Singer said, nodding to Mary – and come home. She had a part-time position at the USD for the moment, and her hands full at home.

They waited a year, while her mother fought and lost to cancer, then waited another year, while Susan grieved and put things in order. Singer put the time to good use and by the time Susan Hill became Susan Singer, he was a home and business owner. 

“Still don’t know what she wanted with me,” he told them. “Susan was smart, so smart, and beautiful, and could have taken her pick. But we fit together, somehow, like we were made for it.”

Susan was a historical anthropologist, studying the beliefs and customs of the ancient peoples who lived in the cradle of civilization. She was published and invitations to lecture were becoming more common. Bobby got used to large, dusty books in dead languages sitting around the house.

It was May and warm already the night Susan shook him awake, trembling all over. “Suse?” Bobby asked groggily, and then sat up with alarm when he saw her white face. “Baby, what’s wrong?”

Her teeth were chattering, and the room was oddly cold. “Something’s wrong,” she said, wide-eyed and terrified. “I was reading a book, a book of rituals, working on the language, reading aloud to hear the cadence, and now something is horribly wrong.”

“You were reading a book and now something is wrong?” Bobby asked, confused. “Is someone here?” He glanced outside the window, thinking maybe a late tornado was heading toward them.

Susan fisted her hands and pressed them to her mouth. “Something’s here,” she whispered. “I’ve let something in, Bobby. God help us, I’ve let it in.”

There was nothing in the house, and Bobby didn’t know what to think except that maybe Susan had fallen asleep working and had one zinger of a nightmare. He coaxed her into bed and held her for hours until sleep won out.

She was herself the next morning, a little embarrassed and apologetic. “Let my mind play tricks on me,” she said, abashed, and Bobby had rubbed her back. 

“You work too much,” he said. “Need a vacation.”

Susan had taken a deep breath, then smiled up at him. “Let’s do that,” she said. “I’ll tell them I can’t teach that summer class, and we’ll go somewhere together. Call it a belated honeymoon.”

“I’m sold,” Bobby said, and kissed her soundly.

He came in three nights later and her eyes were black. 

* * *

He would have gone to prison for murder, Singer told them, except that while he was towing a car back from Lennox, Susan had gone into work and killed the rare books librarian when the man wouldn’t let her take a book out of the building. 

She’d stopped at a gas station on the way home and killed the clerk as well. Both men had their throats cut with one of the Singers’ kitchen knives, and bled out in minutes.

Bobby had already stabbed her twice with the very same knife, after she’d thrown it at him and missed, narrowly, but she was still coming at him, still covered in blood and saying – Singer shuddered, and didn’t continue. Saying awful things, he concluded, when the house lit up with police lights from the drive.

“I’ll see you later, lover,” Susan had purred at him, and black smoke poured out of her mouth. When it was gone, all that was left was Susan’s bloody body. 

They sat in silence at the table for a long time, and John got up and turned on the kitchen lights, because it was growing dark, and the house pressed upon him. 

“What was the book?” Jim asked finally, and Singer looked up as if he’d forgotten they were in the room. He ran a hand over his face.

“Book?” he asked.

“That the librarian wouldn’t let her take,” Jim clarified, and Bobby sighed and stood up.

“The Key of Solomon,” he said in his den, over his desk, and showed them poor, worn photocopies. “One of three copies in the world, on loan to USD when Susan took it.” He rifled the papers out and John saw symbols and drawings and dead words. “These are the pieces I’ve been able to get my hands on.”

Mary touched the papers carefully, as if they were fragile. “Where are the other two copies?” she asked. 

Singer scratched his beard. “One’s in a private collection in Afghanistan,” he said. “That’s actually where most of these copies came from. Owner’s pretty cooperative, but it’s not like I can drop in and borrow it, and mail’s not too reliable in those parts.”

“The second?” John asked, and Singer let out his weary sigh.

“Damn Nazis,” he said. “It’s somewhere, Europe or maybe South America, but damned if I know where to get my hands on it. The third, the one Susan took, belonged to the Library of Congress.”

“It must be real,” Jim said quietly. He was holding an intricate drawing of a pentagram. “Otherwise, no reason to take it.”

“Oh, it’s real,” Singer said grimly. “I’ve no doubt that the demon inside of Susan stashed it someplace and then collected it once it had itself a new host. But that right there in your hands,” he nodded at Jim, “that’ll keep and hold a demon, powerless, while you exorcise it. I’ve used it twice now, and it’s as real as it can be.”

“We need to find it,” Mary said. “Who knows what else is in it, what it could give us to fight them.”

Singer nodded. “I’m open to suggestions,” he said. 

* * *

Jim stayed with Singer, and John and Mary drove back to Kansas in silent thought. They’d just crossed the state line when John said, “How did your parents become hunters?”

Mary frowned, startled out of her own funk. “What?” she asked, giving her head a little shake. “You’ve never asked me that before.”

John shrugged, looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Seems like pretty big things, that turn other people to this life,” he said.

Mary kept her eyes on the road. “I had a baby sister,” she said, “once,” and then she swallowed convulsively and John didn’t think she was going to continue, but after a long, weighted silence, she did.

“Our name isn’t really Campbell,” she said. “It’s Harrison. So I was Mary Harrison and I lived with my parents and my baby sister in Salem, Oregon. I was almost five years old, and my sister was almost six months old, and I was excited because I was going to kindergarten in the fall.”

She was silent again. It started to rain, and John turned on the lights and the wipers. 

“Then one day my sister was gone and something else was in her crib,” Mary said, and shuddered, then clutched at herself. “Something that looked like her but wasn’t. Something, something horrible, John, so horrible.” She covered her mouth with one hand and John wondered if he was going to have to pull over, but when she pulled her hand away, she was steady again.

“Changeling, I guess you would call it,” Mary said with a shrug. “It was like something evil had crawled into the baby’s skin. I wouldn’t sleep in my bed anymore, in the same room with it. I remember sleeping under the dining room table, pulling all the chairs in close around me for protection.

“Mom nearly lost her mind. She was hysterical, for days on end. Dad couldn’t face it, he kept saying it was some kind of delayed baby blues, something wrong with Mom and that I was just picking up on it. He knew though, because what was in that crib – of course he knew. And then one day he came downstairs from putting the baby down and sat on the couch and turned on the television, and when the baby started crying ... when that ... that _thing_ started squalling, none of us would go upstairs to her. We all just sat there, watching the television.”

The windshield was fogging up, and John turned on the defroster. The wipers swished steadily. John kept his eyes on the road.

“I fell asleep like that,” Mary said, and she sounded like she was telling a story about some other family, some other child. “When I woke up, I was in the back of the car, covered with a blanket. My favorite doll was beside me. It was dark, and Mom and Dad were silent in the front seat. Dad’s hand was bandaged, white with a red stain. I could see it on the steering wheel. I lose some time after that, but when I started kindergarten, I was Mary Campbell, and we lived in Lawrence, Kansas.”

Neither of them spoke again until John parked the car at their apartment an hour later. 

“What was her name?” he said after he’d turned off the ignition.

Mary turned to him, but he couldn’t see her eyes in the dark. 

“I don’t remember,” she said, and got out of the car.

* * *

Jim had been staying with friends and relatives, but now he restricted himself to staying with other hunters, or living on the road. John thought it was a lonely way to live, and he told Jim so once after they’d killed a wendigo in Wisconsin together.

Jim was putting careful, neat stitches into John’s left calf, where the creature, already on fire, screaming and writhing, had made one last attempt to take someone, anyone, down with it. Its claw-like fingernails had torn a long, jagged rip through John’s jeans and into his flesh. 

“I don’t want to bring these things into unsuspecting homes,” Jim was saying. “No way to repay friends and family who open their doors to you.”

“Yeah,” John said, “but don’t you feel, I don’t know, ungrounded?”

Jim shrugged, and John wished he could take back the question, because it suddenly occurred to him that Jim must feel ungrounded, anyway, after being barred from the church. 

He thought, too, of his own father, covering John’s shift this weekend at the shop, knowing nothing of demons and ghosts and monsters, and shifted uneasily. 

“Hold still,” Jim murmured, and tightened his grip on John’s leg. 

“I’ve thought about starting my own church,” Jim said after a few moments. 

“Yeah?” John said. “The Church of 20th Century Hunters?”

Jim laughed. “Or St. Hubert’s,” he said. “Patron saint of hunters.”

John chuckled, then said seriously, “You should think about that, really.”

Jim nodded. “I am, really,” he said, and tied off the last stitch. He wiped the wound clean and wrapped a light bandage around the leg. “Done,” he pronounced, and John swung his leg, testing it, then tentatively got to his feet.

“Thanks,” he said, and hobbled over to the bed to flop down. “Mary lived most of her life in the same place,” he pointed out. “Her family had connections, and they still hunted.”

Jim was neatly putting away the first aid supplies. “True,” he said mildly, “but that might not be the best example, John.”

“Oh,” John said, and remembered with the same shiver it always gave him that he had been _dead_ , along with Mary’s parents. 

“Do you remember it?” Jim asked, turning around, curious. “Being dead?”

John shook his head. He remembered Mary’s father pulling her out of the car, her screaming that he was hurting her, trying to get her away, and then a black space before waking up in the middle of the road in Mary’s arms. There had been no white light, no voices, nothing more than unconsciousness. 

Jim sat on the second bed across from John. “You realize,” he said, and then cleared his throat. “If we succeed, in killing or stopping the demon Mary made her deal with, that it might nullify the whole deal.”

John lifted his head. “What’re you trying to say there, Pastor?”

“It brought you back to life,” Jim said gently. “If the deal is off, you might die.”

“Oh.” John let his head drop back down. It hadn’t occurred to him, actually, but he found he wasn’t too worried about it. He shrugged. “Well, I should be dead a few years over now,” he said. “Worth if it I know Mary’s safe.” He thought then of Mary, alone in the world without parents or husband, and picked his head back up to look at Jim.

“You guys would take care of her, right?” he said. “You and Bobby and –” He waved a hand vaguely to indicate the hunting world. “If I’m not around?”

“Of course,” Jim said. “Not that Mary needs taking care of.”

John snorted, because, yeah, Mary could lay out just about anyone. But then he thought about Mary alone, hunting, and how it could easily erode from her all the wonderful things that made her Mary, and leave her a tough and impenetrable shell, like too many old hunters he’d met. 

“The hunt could eat her,” he said, staring at the ceiling. “She’ll need people to remind her there’s more in the world.”

“Yes,” Jim said, then leaned over to pat John’s good leg. “But for now, let’s plan on keeping you around a while longer to do that.”

“Fine by me,” John said.

* * * 

In 1978, John learned about the Colt.  
   
The Colt, he was told, was made by Samuel Colt the gun-maker in 1835, when Haley’s Comet was overhead. It was made for a hunter, and it was said that it could kill anything.  
   
Including demons.  
   
“It’s a hunters’ fairy tale, John,” Mary told him in exasperation when he asked her about it. “Dad used it tell it to me as a bedtime story.”  
   
“That’s what people say about the things we hunt, Mary,” John answered, throwing his arms out. “What if it’s real? What if we could find it? Do you know what this could mean? No hoping we can send this thing to hell, and that it won’t come back, looking for revenge. Dead, Mary, we could kill this thing dead.”

“Sounds great,” she said, and turned back to the dishes in the sink. “Seen it lying around?”

John left the apartment and went down to the garage, flipping on the lights and turning the radio up to blast the Stones and getting to work on an engine overhaul. He banged his head on the underside of the hood when the radio shut off abruptly. 

“You know I’m not paying you overtime, right?” his dad called, and John poked his head out. 

“I know it,” he said. “Just wanted to get this ready for morning, get it finished up tomorrow.”

“Uh-huh,” his dad said, and went into the office.

He was finishing up by the time his father came back out, giving John’s work a quick, critical eye followed by a grunt of approval. 

“You ought to get home to that girl,” his dad said. 

John pressed his lips together. He’d needed something to put his hands on, something he knew how to take apart and put together and make run the way it ought to. He’d yet to figure out how to do any of that with Mary.

Feeling his father’s eyes on him, John grabbed a rag and started wiping grease off his hands. He heard his dad heave a sigh, and then he said, “I sure wish your mom could have met her.”

John’s head jerked up in surprise. His mother had died of a heart attack, clear out of the blue, when John was 16, and John could count on his fingers the number of times his father had brought her up since then. Now he met John’s startled look with a sad smile. 

“She sure would have liked that firecracker,” he said, and John had to smile back, because, yeah, his mother would have loved Mary.

“Would have told me she was too much woman for me to handle,” he said ruefully, and his father barked a laugh.

“That’s the truth,” he said, and swatted John with the rolled-up newspaper in his hand. “Good thing we Winchester men don’t know when we’re beat.”

John shook his head and gave a half-laugh, then turned and closed the car hood. “We are an obstinate bunch,” he said, and his dad grunted. 

“See you in the morning, son,” his father said, and John, wiping off and putting away tools, called a “Bye,” over his shoulder as his father let himself out.

When he was done cleaning up, John went into the office and sat at the desk, then picked up the phone and dialed Bobby.

“Oh, sure, it might be real,” Bobby said, “but that don’t mean we can get our hands on it.”

“If we wanted to,” John asked, “how do you think we would start?”

Bobby sighed on the other end, and John could hear him scratching his beard. “Trace it back, same as anything,” he said finally. “Maybe knowing where it’s been might tell us where it is now. Come to think of it, I’m mighty curious if there is such a weapon, how Colt came by the knowledge to make it.”

“He made it for a hunter, right?” John said. “Maybe someone had a, a recipe for it, but they needed a real gun-maker to put it all together.”

“Boy, if there’s a recipe for a magic everything-killin’ weapon out there, do you know how hell-bent, well, _hell_ would be on keeping that out of our hands?” he said, and then both men were silent, breathing and thinking.

“The Key of Solomon,” John said finally.

“Yeah,” Bobby said. 

“We gotta find it,” John said.

“Yeah,” Bobby repeated. They were quiet again for a moment, and then Bobby cleared his throat. 

“Guess I know where to start with that,” he said. “Been meaning to go back over Susan’s case, trace her steps from that day, anything that might clue us in. Ain’t the first time I’ve done it, but I’ve got more tricks up my sleeve now, know more what to look for.”

“Call Jim,” John said. “Get him to come help you.” Bobby didn’t speak, but his breath was loud over the line. “Don’t do it alone, Bobby,” John said, then added, “Outside eyes might see things differently.”

Bobby grunted. “True enough,” he said. “I’ll give him a call. Talk to you later,” and he hung up.

John put the receiver in the cradle, shut off the lights, locked up, and went home to Mary.

* * *

In May, it was five years. Five down, and five to go. 

* * * 

In June, John came home late from work to a dark apartment. He went straight to the kitchen before flipping on a light and jumped when it revealed Mary sitting at the table. 

“Babe?” he asked, and cold fear gripped him. “What is it?”

Mary’s hands were on the table, tightly clenched, and John sat down and put his hand over them. They were icy cold and he started rubbing them, almost automatically. “Mary?” he asked, and the word “Christo” was on his lips when she said, “I went to a clinic, but then I couldn’t do it.” She started crying silently, tears dripping down her cheeks and onto the table.

John didn’t understand. “A clinic?” he asked. “What couldn’t you do?” but Mary just looked at him, white-faced and more terrified than he’d ever seen her, and suddenly he knew what she meant.

“You’re pregnant?” he asked, dumbfounded, because Mary took that pill, but she was nodding. “But –”

“It just happens sometimes,” she said, and she sounded more like herself. 

“A baby,” John said, and he was scared and happy and confused all at once. “A baby,” he said again, and looked at Mary’s wet face. “Mary, I mean, I know we didn’t plan it, but – _our_ baby, Mary,” and he smiled at her.

Mary shook her head and looked away. “I know,” she said. “That’s why I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t going to tell you, but I was sitting there filling out the forms and – it’s our baby, John.”

“Why would you go there at all?” he asked, because while he and Mary had agreed that raising a baby and hunting demons didn’t go exactly hand-in-hand, they’d talked about postponing parenthood, not closing the door on it.

Mary shook her head again and sniffed, then turned back to look at him. “What have I done, John?” she said, and her voice shook. “It wanted something from me.” She slid her cold hands out from under his and placed them over her belly protectively. “What if this is what it wants? What if it wants our baby?” and she started crying in earnest. 

John could only sit there in shock for a moment, cold, sick fear in his stomach, and then he got up and wrapped his arms around Mary, bending over her as if to shield her. “What have I done? What have I done?” she sobbed, and John shushed her and kissed the top of her head and rocked her and felt the cold block of terror crystallize into something hard and immovable inside of him:

_It can’t have our baby._

* * * 

In 1979, Dean arrived, red-faced and demanding and squawking his displeasure. 

John counted his fingers and toes, and measured his hands and feet against his own. He ran one finger over the downy hair, and the baby squinted open watery blue-green eyes and his cries faded to unhappy grumbles. 

“I hear ya, buddy,” John said softly, and the baby blew bubbles on his lips while glaring at John. “You’re in charge.”

 _You know it_ , Dean’s belligerent look seemed to say, and John laughed quietly and rocked gently and was so happy he felt almost crushed by it. 

Mary wouldn’t hold him. 

She begged off as being too tired to the nurses, but when Dean’s first 24 hours passed without him being in Mary’s arms, John waited until they were alone and stood up from the bedside chair and stooped over the bed, little blue bundle in his arms.

“No, John,” Mary said, and she had that nasty sour-lemon look on her face, but John completely ignored her and just plopped Dean into her arms, and they curved automatically around the baby. Mary obstinately turned her face away and looked out the window so Dean let out a high-pitched shriek of displeasure and kicked his mother firmly in the solar plexus with both tiny feet.

“Ow!” Mary said, and looked at the baby in spite of herself. John started to laugh at the look of indignant outrage on her face, but then he stopped because Mary was looking at the baby, who was glaring fiercely back at her, and then she said, “Oh, Dean.”

“Yeah,” John said, and bent over to put his arms around her. He kissed the top of her head. “Yeah.”

* * *

It was also the year John’s father died. He didn’t come into the shop one day, and John went over to the house and found him on the floor beside his recliner. The television was still on. An auto magazine was on the floor beside him.

A surprisingly sizable sum of money went to John’s older brother, Glen, and his family. John got the shop and the house. He and Mary moved into the house after a few months, and after a few more months of seven-day weeks at the shop, John took on a partner. 

Dean started crawling. Dean said, “Mama,” and then, “Dada,” and then, “Eat.” Dean carried around a toy car and slept with it like it was a teddy bear. He said, “Vroom!”

In between feedings and diaper changes and toy car races, Mary read every demonology text she could get her hands on. She studied the weather patterns that John didn’t have time to study anymore. She made daily sojourns to the library to scour newspapers from across the continent. 

They didn’t do much hunting. John found a weekend to help Bobby and a couple other guys clean out a vampire nest. Mary and Jim shut down a poltergeist in Oklahoma, a vengeful spirit in Missouri. They both stayed close to home, close to Dean, close to each other.

Every day was one day closer to 10 years. John, who had not attended church since his mother died, started praying.


	3. The Levee's Gonna Break

In 1980, Bobby called. “Well,” he said, “I’ve got an idea.”

Dean strapped into the carseat in the back of the Impala, they drove to South Dakota. Jim Murphy was already there.

Dean spit up half his lunch on Bobby, then peed through his diaper while sitting on Jim’s lap. He escaped, naked, from the bathroom while Mary was trying to clean him up, tottering into the living room in his aggressive, bow-legged baby strut, and knocked over a pile of Bobby’s books before throwing an empty beer can at John’s head. 

“Some kid,” Bobby grunted. 

“Ahh plafttt!” Dean declared, and ripped Bobby’s trucker cap off his head when he crouched down in front of the baby. He waved it triumphantly. 

Mary caught him and dressed him, and she and John wrestled him into the playpen they’d brought – he hadn’t figured out how to climb out of it. Yet. 

Bobby was pouring coffee in the kitchen. “We done monkeying around with monkeyshine there?” he asked, and set a cup down for each of them before sitting down with a heavy sigh. 

“Here’s my thinking,” he said. “We need to find that book. We all agree on that?” He waited for a chorus of nodding heads. “And the clock is a-ticking on Mary and who knows how many others. Myself, I don’t feel like waiting for that clock to wind down. I’d rather do this thing on my own schedule.”

He paused for a drink, and Mary said, “You want to summon the demon that possessed Susan.” 

Bobby set down his cup. “Yep,” he said. 

“Summon – no!” Jim said in horror. “We’re not going to engage in witchcraft and actually call that thing. It’s – that’s what we’re supposed to be stopping.”

“I’m here to stop evil,” Bobby said. “We call this thing, we get it in that Devil’s Trap, we find out what it did with the book, and then we send its ass to hell.”

John finally had something to say, a clear thought through the whirlwind in his head. “How will we get it to tell us where the book is?” he asked.

“I’ve got some ideas,” Bobby said grimly.

“Me too,” Mary said. She leaned forward over the table. “How do we summon it?”

“No.” Jim spoke forcefully and stood up. “We are not bringing some evil thing into this world, no matter how badly we need what it has.”

“Then leave,” Mary said without anger. “You don’t have to be part of this, Jim.”

Jim stared down at her, angry and torn and betrayed, while Mary looked coolly up at him. Finally, he turned and went outside to the porch. 

Somewhere inside the questions and fear and hope swirling around in John, he wondered if this was how Mary had looked when she’d made her deal, unwavering and unrepentant. Her eyes fell on him, and his throat went dry and he couldn’t speak.

“In or out, John?” she asked, and he lowered his head and reached for his coffee. He took a scalding swallow, then fiddled with the mug. 

“How will we summon it?” he repeated Mary’s question. “And get it into the Devil’s Trap?” He looked up to find Mary and Bobby both staring at him. “I’m not against this,” he said carefully. “But if we’re going to do it, we need to do it right. I don’t think we’ll get a second chance if this one goes south.”

“We can’t use the text that Susan used in the first place,” Bobby said. “I’ve studied that thing backward and forward, and near as I can tell, it brought the damn thing straight up from hell. Guess it took it a couple of days to crawl up into Susan, but now that it’s loose in the world, it could be in anyone.”

“Unless someone else has already exorcised it,” Mary said, and Bobby shrugged.

“If they have, my idea won’t work, but I doubt it,” he said. “I’ve had my ear to the ground pretty firm for more than 10 years now, heard of a few exorcisms, but nothing that sounded like this thing.”

“How could you know?” John asked. “Hell, for all we know, this demon and the one Jim exorcised could be the same.”

Bobby shook his head. “They’re all different,” he said. “They’ve got – personalities. I could be wrong, sure, or I could have missed it through the grapevine, but my money’s on this thing still walking the earth free. Besides, if someone has sent it back to hell, what I want to try won’t work – just be a dud. Won’t bring anything else running. Or shouldn’t, at least.”

“How’s that going to work?” John asked, and Mary answered him. 

“You found its name,” she said, and Bobby nodded.

“Not in Susan’s book, but a related text. Had a lot of the same materials in it,” he said. “We know it now, and we can call it here.”

“You can’t summon it into the Devil’s Trap,” Jim said from behind them, and they all turned to look. He had come silently back into the house and was standing in the kitchen, hands in his pockets. “The ritual won’t work.”

Bobby nodded slowly. “Summon it into the house, though, and I bet it goes straight for us,” he said. “Bet it’ll be mad as hell. Bet it won’t watch where it’s going.” He pushed back from the table and went into the living room. 

“Bet it won’t look up,” Bobby said, standing beside the playpen.

They all looked up. There, above Dean happily banging his toy car against the playpen’s slats, painted on the ceiling, was a Devil’s Trap.

* * *

They couldn’t leave Dean anywhere except with other hunters, John and Mary decided, given the enormously reckless acts they were about to engage in, so they drove halfway back home, to Nebraska, to leave him with Bill and Ellen Harvelle. 

Driving north again, John said abruptly, “We should have a will, say that Dean’s to go to Bill and Ellen, or Jim, if we don’t take him with us.”

“Cheery thoughts, baby,” Mary said dryly. 

“I mean it.” John glanced at her sideways. She was eyeballing him in that way that meant she thought he was half-crazy. “Otherwise Glen will probably end up with him, and, I mean, he’d take good care of him, sure, but he doesn’t know anything about what’s out there, what to keep him safe from.”

“Yeah.” Mary was quiet for a moment, then said, “I never wanted to raise a kid to be a hunter.”

John shrugged – it had never occurred to him to raise a kid to be a hunter, but then, he was still pretty new to the hunting business. 

“I was going to run off with you, and leave all that behind. Be normal. Be safe,” Mary said. “The thing under the bed would just be a bad dream for our kids, and we could exorcise it with a nightlight.”

She turned her head to look out the window at the night flashing past them. “I thought about not telling you, after Mom and Dad,” she said to the window. “After the deal. Kind of wish I hadn’t told you, some days.”

“Really?” John asked, incredulous, and Mary looked at him, blinking, eyes a little too bright.

“Don’t you?” she asked. “God, John, the things you have to know because of me – don’t you wish we were at home tucking Dean into bed right now instead of leaving him with people we barely know and driving through the night to call up a demon?”

John shrugged. “Maybe I’d be happy because I wouldn’t know any better, but it would be a lie, Mary, and sooner or later it would have come out,” he said. “Besides, then we wouldn’t really know each other. I don’t want that.”

Mary was smiling slightly. “You want to know what I look like when I’m beheading a vampire and covered in blood?” she asked, and John grinned.

“You look sexy with that machete,” he said. 

Mary shook her head. “You are full crazy, John Winchester,” she said, and then slid across the bench to kiss his cheek. 

“Runs in the family,” he said. 

* * * 

It was well past midnight when they got back to Bobby’s. He’d cleared some floor space in the living room, not under the Devil’s Trap, and lines were already laid out in chalk, candles ready to be lit. Bobby looked up from the couch where he was studying a book when they came in.

“We doing this now?” John asked, jerking his chin at the set-up. “You don’t want to wait until morning?”

“Mary,” Bobby said with a sigh, “let me know when you find John’s balls.”

“Oh, listen, Bobby,” Mary started, but then Jim came into the room and she cut herself off. Jim shook his head admonishingly at her and John laughed as she blushed. 

“Ready?” Jim asked, and they were all abruptly serious. 

Jim insisted on a prayer before they started. Bobby grumbled some about it, but finally said, “Well, can’t hurt,” and at the end, he joined them in saying, “Amen.”

_Dear God, give me courage, for perhaps I lack it more than anything else._

_I need courage to fight against the devil, against terrors and troubles, temptations, attractions, darkness and false lights, against tears, depression, and above all fear._

_I need Your help, dear God._

_Strengthen me with Your love and Your grace._

_Console me with Your blessed presence and grant me the courage to persevere until I am with You forever in heaven._

They all took a deep breath and stared at each other. “Here we go,” Bobby said grimly, and knelt down to begin. They knelt across from him. Bobby lit the candles on the edges of the markings with a hand that shook ever so slightly, then flipped open the book and started reading, ancient syllables wrought with power. When he finished, he lit the final candle in the middle, and it gave off a flare that made them cover their eyes.

When they looked back, the feeling of power, of darkness, was gone. The candles flickered gently, and the kitchen light poured through the open door. 

“Huh,” Bobby said, and scratched his beard, looking back down at the text. Mary got to her feet and peered into the kitchen. John got up and went to the foot of the stairs, looking and listening, but all was quiet. Jim went into the study and came back out, shaking his head. 

“Guess I coulda read it wrong,” Bobby said. He leaned over and blew out the candles before standing. “We could –”

Bobby never got to say what they could do, because someone kicked in the front door and came barreling in, with a shout of, “Honey, I’m home!”

The demon was inside a short, thin balding man wearing a horrendously garish open-necked shirt and polyester pants. It grinned cockily at them.

“Hail, hail, the gang’s all here!” it chirped, then turned to Bobby. “Baby,” it said, putting a hand over its heart, “and here I thought you didn’t care. Wow! This is like coming back to the old homestead for me. Love what you’ve done with the place.”

“I’m ready for you this time,” Bobby said, his face shadowed and his voice low. “Things are different now.”

The demon tossed back its head and brayed with laughter. “What, you mean different from when you killed poor, sweet Susan?” Its eyes gleamed with cruel mirth. “Too bad, that. I owed her a great debt, springing me from the pit and all.”

“And now you’re going back there,” Jim said, and started chanting.

The demon snorted, then snuffled, then doubled over with laughter. “An exorcism!” it squealed. “Why, that’s just adorable. Look, you’ve got your own priest and everything. Oh, Bobby, the trouble you’ve gone to. It’s touching, really.” It looked around the room, beady eyes passing over John dismissively, then spying Mary. 

“And who else did you bring to the party?” it asked, suddenly interested. “Look at you, golden girl.” It cocked its head as Jim’s chanting trailed off into futility, then took a step toward her. Mary lifted her chin defiantly. “And what’s touched you, sweetheart?” the demon whispered. “Someone’s been making deals. Naughty naughty.”

“Screw you,” Mary said, and tossed a cup of holy water into its face. It screamed, steam coming off its reddening skin, and then whipped its head around, snarling, eyes pure black.

“You little bitch,” it spit out, and Mary turned and ran across the room. It was after her in a heartbeat, its hand outstretched, palm out, eyes glistening – and then it stopped. Panting, it slowly raised its eyes to the ceiling.

“Welcome home,” Bobby said maliciously, and the demon screamed, breaking out windows and shaking the house.

* * *

They started with holy water, tossing it by the cupful into the circle of the Devil’s Trap. The demon screamed and tore at its hair and cursed them while its skin blistered and sizzled. It bounced from side to side of the unseen walls holding it in, reverberating back from the barrier as if it were physical. 

It tossed itself to the floor and covered its ears and screamed when Jim began praying, then started pounding its head against the floor. “Shut up!” it screamed. “Shut up shut up shut up!”

“You want us to shut up?” Bobby asked it. “Tell me what you did with the book, and this will all be over.”

The demon jerked its head back and snarled at him. “Please. You’re not letting me go. You’re sending me back to hell. Do you know what hell is like?” it asked scornfully.

Bobby shrugged. “Little toasty, I’ll bet.” 

The demon laughed, a hoarse, grating sound that was in no way human. “I’ll tell you if you let me go,” it said. “Otherwise, no deal. Do you know what they’ll do to me down there?”

“Guess the big bosses won’t be happy with you,” Bobby said, and looked like he was thinking it over. Then he shrugged. “Naw,” he said, and threw a glass of holy water into the demon’s face. 

While it screamed and threw itself on the floor, Bobby backed away, into the kitchen, and the others followed.

“It’s not going to tell us,” John said low. “Not without incentive.”

“We’re not letting that thing back into the world,” Jim said, and Bobby shook his head grimly. 

“It doesn’t have to know that,” Mary said, and the three men stared at her. She stared back levelly. “Stay here,” she continued. “Let it think I’m acting alone.”

“You’re not going in there alone with it,” John said, grabbing at her elbow as a jolt of panic shot through him. 

“John,” she said, in that slightly exasperated way that drove him mad. She put her hand over his on her arm. “Stay right inside the kitchen door, where you can see and hear, but don’t let it know you’re there.”

He shook his head, but while Bobby grimaced and Jim looked despairing, he could tell they were both for it. “Damn it,” he hissed, and she leaned up to kiss him. 

“Be right back,” she said softly. Bobby caught hold of her sleeve and held up a single finger. He walked heavily over to the back door, yanked it open and let the creaky screen slam shut, then walked silently back to them.

Mary nodded at Bobby and went into the living room. John pressed himself against the crack of the half-opened door, near the hinges where he couldn’t be seen. The red wallpaper lit by Bobby’s dim, dusty lamps bathed the room in scarlet, his Mary’s hair gleaming gold against it. 

The demon had somewhat recovered and was sitting in the middle of the trap, legs drawn up, arms around them, rocking slightly. 

“Our little dealmaker,” it said. “What’s wrong, baby? Clock running out on you?” 

“I need that book,” Mary said. 

“I can’t make deals from in here,” it said. “Let me out and we can talk about it.” 

“Tell me and we can talk about letting you out,” Mary said, and began a slow, deliberate walk around the circle. The demon watched her with wary eyes, tense when she disappeared behind it, turning its head to pick her track back up as she circled around.

“What’d you sell?” it asked, sounding genuinely curious. “Your soul? Hope you got something better than your cookie-cutter lover boy in there.”

“My soul’s just fine,” Mary said. “Not going anywhere.”

“That so?” The demon narrowed its eyes, even more interested. “You’re marked, though. Bet you didn’t even know, but I know. I can see. You’ve sealed a deal with someone, all right, and we don’t do things for free downstairs.”

Mary shrugged and circled back behind the demon. “Nothing I’ll miss,” she said. “That’s what he told me.” She paused and leaned, and John tensed, but Bobby’s arm clamped down like steel on his shoulder, holding him in place. “Of course, he’s a liar,” she whispered, so close she was almost inside the trap, and the demon spun its head, snarling. 

“Darling, we’re all liars,” it said. “Or didn’t you know? I think you did. But you wanted what you wanted, and now you’ve got it. No way out of payment.”

“I’m used to getting what I want,” Mary said, and continued her arc around the trap. The demon watched her warily. 

“Who was it?” it asked, licking its lips. “Who got to swap spit with you, sweet thing?”

“Didn’t catch his name,” Mary said, circling back again. “But he had yellow eyes.”

The demon chortled. “You dealt with _him_? My, my, my. That’s beautiful. You have no idea.”

Mary came to a halt directly in front of it and crouched down. “I do,” she said. “You think I helped Bobby out just to revenge Susan? Never even met the woman. I’m here to save my own skin.”

The demon’s eyes flicked to the kitchen. “Where’d the men get off to?” it asked. 

“Went to the shed,” Mary said. “Find iron chains to tie you up with.”

The demon hissed and shuddered. It ran its fingers nervously over its drawn-up knees. It looked at Mary skeptically. 

“I tell you where the book is, you let me out?” it asked. 

“Sweeten the deal,” Mary said. “You think you’re the only one who might get their ass handed to them over this?”

It licked its lips again, casting nervous glances around the room. “What else you want?” it asked.

“A name,” Mary said, and the demon snorted a laugh. 

“You gonna take on the big bad?” it said, and shook its head. “Well, your funeral, sister.” Then it smiled, cruel and cunning. “That book, though – it’s kind of too good not to tell.”

“Where is it?” Mary asked. 

It laughed and shook its head, rubbing its hands together. “Bedroom heating vent,” it said, and Mary blinked at it. “Upstairs.” It hooted and rocked in glee. “It’s been here the whole time! I bet good old Bobby has been going nuts looking for the worthless thing.” 

Now it was Bobby whose muscles were tense and ready, and John and Jim both got a firm grip on him. Mary pressed her lips together, stood up, and went up the stairs without a word. She came back down a few minutes later, a dust-covered, heavy old book in her arms.

The demon squealed with laughter at the sight of it. Mary, grim-faced, picked up a glass of holy water and tossed it in its face. It shrieked and fell over.

“Bitch!” it howled, so Mary threw another glass of water at it. 

“Stop sniveling,” she snapped when its scream deteriorated into whimpering and muttered curses. “Give me the name so we can finish this before they come back in.”

The demon muttered and rocked and John didn’t think it was going to capitulate, but then it said something, low and foul, that made all three men shudder. 

The demon looked up at Mary with beady eyes. “Well, m’lady?” it sneered. “You’ve got what you want. Try to save your gutter soul, if you think you can. If you think it’s worth anything. And let me out of this damnable trap.”

Mary’s face was stone. “Jim,” she called, never taking her eyes from the demon’s. Jim came back into the room, followed by John and Bobby, who went straight for the book. He picked it up, opened it, and nodded. 

Jim drew a breath and said the opening words of the exorcism. 

“Whore!” the demon shouted, and the room shook. A lamp fell over. It leapt to its feet and threw itself at Mary, mouth open as if it meant to rip her throat out, but it bounced back from the confines of the trap. “Slut! Defiler!”

It screamed and fell back down, writhing, as Jim continued. “You’ll get yours, you lying little cunt!” it shrieked at Mary, who was impassive and motionless at the edge of the circle. “You’ll get everything you deserve!”

Then it turned its face to Jim and howled, face contorting hideously, and there was a heinous laugh in that howl, and it twisted its own head so that they all heard the neck break. Then black smoke poured out of its mouth and up into the trap, which glowed with red embers for a moment. 

The smoke disappeared. The body fell over. The room was silent.

“It’s finished,” Jim said quietly. 

Mary fell to her knees. 

* * *

They took home copies of pages from the book, and spent countless hours poring over them, trying to decipher them, in long phone conversations with Bobby and Jim about them. They spent more hours doing research on the name, learning everything they could about the enemy. 

Dean went from toddling to running, from words to sentences. He demanded that everyone give him five, and he rode his Big Wheel around and around and around the kitchen table, where his parents sat scouring demonology texts.

The clock kept ticking. 

* * *

John woke and Mary wasn’t beside him. He went to the door and could see the kitchen light shining up the stairwell. He stopped in Dean’s room, but the boy was sleeping soundly, so he went downstairs and paused in the dark living room.

Mary was on the phone. “I know,” she murmured softly into it, then, “I don’t know.” She was quiet, and then repeated, “I know, me too. But we’re working on it.” Another silence, then, “All right. I’ll let you know. You too.” 

She stood and hung the phone up. John came into the doorway. Mary turned and saw him, pressed her fist to her mouth, shook her head.

John didn’t say anything. Mary lowered her fist and coughed. 

“Eileen Miller,” she said. “From –”

“Saginaw,” John finished for her. 

Mary nodded. “She called last year, scared out of her mind. Owned up to the whole thing. Her husband, Jim, went through that windshield, remember? She was thrown out, ended up with some nasty road rash and a broken ankle, but his head was buried in that tree. And some guy pulls up in a car, offers to help.”

She paused, drew a shaky breath, and John finished for her. “Offered to really help,” he said, and Mary gave a bitter laugh. 

“Best part?” she said. “Jim’s a drunk. He was a drunk when he crashed that car, he’s a drunk now, slaps Eileen around, and she did it still. She said it was just so horrific, they were newlyweds at the time, the only place she had to go was back home to her parents’ house, where her dad slapped her around –” Mary stopped, shook her head. 

“Bad situation,” John said. “But that’s what it preys on, isn’t it?”

Mary sniffled. “Anyway, we’ve talked a couple of times. She called last week, sounded really bad. I couldn’t stop thinking about her, wanted to make sure she was all right.”

“Bad how?” John asked, and Mary wiped her hand over her face.

“Bad like I wanted to check on her,” she said, then gave him something, something small. “Bad like she’s going to make sure her time doesn’t come up.”

John clenched his jaw to keep angry, scared words from coming out of it. Mary crossed the room. She touched his shoulder.

“Come to bed,” she said, and brushed past him to the stairs. He heard her go up them, then into their room. 

John stood there, staring into the empty kitchen, for a long time. Finally, he turned off the kitchen light and went to bed.


	4. Ruination Day

In 1981, Bill Harvelle and Annie Lovewell called hot on the trail of a werewolf pack in New Mexico looking for some backup, and Mary allowed as how she could use a break from baby-duty. She took the truck, because she still hated the Impala, and waved a hand out the driver’s window as she drove off. 

She looked happy, John thought, like she always did setting off on a hunt. Mary may not have wanted this life, but it was in her blood.

He went inside the house and put some things in a duffle, then strapped Dean into his carseat and headed north. He drove six hours straight, and arrived at Bobby’s unannounced. 

Bobby took it in stride, like he did everything. John thought it probably had been years since the man had been surprised by anything. 

He’d brought a box of Matchbox cars, and set Dean to work at them on the kitchen floor while Bobby poured fresh coffee. 

“You’re thinking about the Colt again,” Bobby said, sitting down at the table, and John let out a huff of laughter.

“Anything you don’t know, Singer?” he asked, and Bobby chuckled. “I want to go through the Key of Solomon, see if we can find anything that might have been used to make it.”

“Hmm,” Bobby said, and sipped his coffee. “Thinkin’ we might be able to make ourselves a weapon?” 

John nodded. “Why not?” he said. “We’ve sussed out every lead on the original anyone’s ever heard of, and we’re still coming up blank on other ideas. Samuel Colt was no different from you and he – hell, he wasn’t even a real hunter, just a gun-maker. I think it’s worth a shot.”

Bobby sighed, and set down his mug. “Give me a minute,” he said, and left the room. 

Dean scooted on his bottom across the floor and ran a car up John’s leg. “Beep-beep!” he said. 

“Eyes on the road,” John answered, and Dean beeped some more. 

Bobby came back with the Key of Solomon, and John quickly cleared a spot on the table for the massive book. Bobby sat down and flipped to a section, then carefully turned pages until he found what he wanted.

“Here,” he said, and pointed to the margins. More than one person had made notations in this book throughout the centuries, and here someone had written in English, “Bind/blessed silver.”

John leaned over to peer more closely into the margins. The pencil was smudged and faded, but beneath that notation was a very small drawing of a bullet. A symbol was half-smeared away on it.

John raised his eyebrows and looked at Bobby. “Colt?” he asked, and Bobby shrugged.

“My guess,” he said. “Especially when I discovered this.” 

Carefully, oh so carefully, he flattened out the spine with one hand. He pressed a finger in between the open pages with the other. In between them were two barely visible torn page edges.

John stared at them, and kept staring when Bobby lifted his hand and they disappeared again. “Someone tore them out,” he said bleakly, and Bobby put a hand on his shoulder. John sat at the table and stared at the book while Bobby went to the cupboard and came back with two glasses of whiskey. He set them further down the table, safely away from the book. 

John scooted his chair down, then downed his glass in one gulp. Bobby, who hadn’t sat yet, returned to the cupboard and came back with the bottle. John nursed the next glass along with Bobby. Dean crashed his cars with noises of delight and destruction. 

“I’m going to take Dean and leave Mary,” John said bleakly. 

“Ah, hell, John,” Bobby said, and pulled off his hat to run a hand over the front of his head. 

John shook his head. “I’m going to have to, we can’t find a way out of this,” he said. “She’s not gonna let this thing go down. You know that. She’ll do whatever she has to do to stop it.”

Bobby sighed. “I know it,” he said sadly. 

John looked across the table at his friend. “I love her,” he said. “I love her so much, but –” and he gestured helplessly at his son. Dean, some child’s instinct kicking in, looked over and then pushed himself to his feet and ran over to John. 

“Daddy,” he said, and climbed up into John’s lap. He patted John’s face. “Daddy.”

“Hey, buddy,” John said. “Want some whiskey?”

“Beer,” Dean said, and Bobby laughed. 

“How about some milk?” Bobby asked, and Dean nodded. Bobby brought a glass over, and John helped Dean carefully drink it. 

“Well,” Bobby said, watching them, “how about we try Plan B first?”

“This is Plan B,” John said. “Plan A got ripped out of the book.”

Bobby nodded. “I think I’ve got something else we can give a whirl,” he said, and John looked up.

* * * 

“A binding spell,” Mary said skeptically when she returned from New Mexico.

“Bobby thinks it will work,” John said. “He’s running it by Jim and a few other people.”

Mary shook her head, tossing dirty clothes from her bag into the washing machine. “Thought a binding spell would just hold something inside a host,” she said.

John leaned in the doorframe. “This one can bind something to a place,” he said. “Bobby thinks he can modify it to bind something to hell.”

Mary set her mouth in a tight line. “And we’ll be up here with no way of knowing if it worked,” she pointed out. 

John was silent, because he’d said the same thing to Bobby, who’d asked him if he had any better ideas other than going on the lam with his kid. Out of ideas, John had said it was worth a shot.

Mary slammed the washer lid shut and flipped it on. She turned around, arms crossed over her chest. “What were you and Bobby doing up there, anyway?” she asked crossly.

John shrugged. “Drinking,” he said, and she snorted and shook her head.

“Nice weekend for Dean,” she said. “You let him play with some guns, too?”

“Just knives,” John said easily, and Mary slapped his ass lightly as she pushed past him to the kitchen. 

“Guess it can’t hurt to try,” she said hours later when she came to bed. “Nothing else, might buy us some time to come up with something else.”

“I’ll tell Bobby you have every confidence in him,” John said, and Mary shook her head. 

“Think that old liar won’t know that for baloney?” she asked, but John didn’t get to answer because she’d crawled up on top of him and covered his mouth with hers.

* * *

They left Dean with the Harvelles, and arrived at Bobby’s house at sundown. Jim and Bobby were waiting for them.

“Here’s the deal,” Bobby said before they started. “This demon? Is one bad bitch.”

Everyone nodded – they had more than a year of solid research behind them. 

“Things might get ugly,” Bobby continued. “Things might get ugly as in none of this might work. The trap might not hold it. Holy water might not burn it. The exorcism might not take. But whatever happens, we stick together in this, and we don’t give it one. Damn. Thing.”

“Meaning what, Bobby?” Mary said with an edge, her back straight.

Bobby looked steadily at her. “Meaning if not all of us – not one of us, even – make it out alive, then so be it,” he said. 

Mary’s eyes flashed at him, but she was silent as Bobby met everyone’s eyes and held them, waiting until he received nods of confirmation. 

Jim blessed each of them with holy water. They armed themselves with iron and consecrated silver, salt and holy water. When they finished, Bobby set his shoulders.

“Hold onto your butts,” he said, and started the summoning ritual.

It was similar, but different, from the last one, and when Bobby finished the incantation, the candles sputtered and burned a bright green. John’s skin crawled, but as the minutes ticked by and nothing happened, the sensation lessened.

Bobby blew out the candles, and they checked the house, inside and out, regrouping in the living room.

“Well?” Mary said.

“Now we wait,” Bobby said grimly, and took a seat. One by one, they joined him. John perched on the arm of the couch and flipped his silver knife in his hand. 

Half-an-hour passed. Mary stood from the couch abruptly. 

“It could be just taking its time,” Jim said to her and Mary gave him that sour-lemon look.

“It may be all leisurely,” she said, “but my bladder’s not.” She stomped out of the room. 

John sighed and slid down to the couch, leaning his head back and studying the Devil’s Trap on the ceiling. He heard Bobby’s chair creak.

“Don’t give up yet,” Bobby said. “We might have to give this more than one go to get it right.”

“Yeah,” John said, because they’d talked about that, but he just wanted it to be over. He heard the toilet flush from the back of the house, and then Mary came back into the room.

“Guess he’s a no-show,” she said, and flopped down on the couch next to John. “Got any more tricks up your sleeve?”

Bobby got up and started picking up the candles. “Let me think on it,” he said. 

Jim, leaning his elbows on his knees, fingers steepled, said, “What about the Enochian ritual?”

John could hear Bobby sucking on his teeth. “Maybe,” he said. 

“Maybe we should say please,” Mary said. She put a hand on John’s knee and squeezed. He put a hand on top of hers and laced their fingers together. 

“Want to try the same one again?” John asked. “We sure of all the pronunciation and everything?”

Bobby muttered something that John couldn’t catch, although he did hear the word “idjit.” 

“Yeah, Bobby,” Mary said. “Maybe the same one again. I mean, you’re not really the scholar, are you? That was Susan. You’re just kind of trying to blindly follow in her footsteps.”

“Mary!” John’s head came up in shock. Mary’s mouth was set in a cruel little smile. Jim and Bobby were both staring at her, Bobby red-faced with anger. He turned on his heel and stormed into the kitchen with the lifeless candles.

“What the hell?” John said to Mary. She narrowed her eyes, the smile fading. 

“What?” she said in irritation. “It’s true. We’ve been following his lead all these years, and you know what he is, John? A salvage man. I mean, you may not be the most learned guy around, but at least you’re an actual mechanic.”

John stared at her, his mouth open. Jim stood up, and Mary gave him a dismissive glance. “Oh, don’t get me started,” she said. “You? You’re not even a real priest anymore. Not that you even knew what you were doing to start with. That was pure luck, with that little girl.” Mary’s cruel smile returned. “Except, not so lucky for her.”

“Christo,” Jim whispered, and Mary laughed.

“Oh, _please_ ,” she said, her eyes as blue as always. “I thought demons were liars. I’m just telling the truth, Jim.”

Jim took a step back, his face frightened and uncertain. John felt frozen on the couch beside Mary. She leaned in close to him, putting their faces together.

“You know what they say, John,” she whispered. “You want something done right, you have to do it yourself. What’re you letting these guys lead us around for? They don’t have a clue.”

She kissed him, pushing her tongue into his mouth and running her fingers through his hair. John sat there motionless, unable to pull away, even as everything in him screamed _wrong wrong wrong_. 

Jim tossed a glass of holy water on her, and she laughed, pulling back just enough to look into John’s eyes. Without breaking her gaze, she reached one hand behind her, palm out, and Jim flew across the room into the wall, where he hung motionless, feet dangling inches from the floor. 

“You,” John breathed, and Mary laughed again, low and seductive and pure evil.

“No, baby,” she murmured, “I’m Mary now.”

When she came back in for another kiss, John tried to push her away, but now he actually could not move, was pinned to the couch by something he couldn’t see, something cold and enormous. Mary – the demon – chuckled, and kissed him deeply. 

“John Winchester,” it husked. “I’ve been hearing things about you. And here Samuel thought so little of you. If only he could see you now.”

“Get away from me,” John said. “Get out of her.”

“Oh,” it purred, “and _so cute_. Who’s hot with the kids these days? ‘Cause I bet you could give them a run for their money.” It rubbed Mary’s body against his obscenely. 

“I’m going to kill you,” John said. “You hear me? I’m going to wipe you out of existence.”

“Temper, temper,” it scolded, and was leaning in for another kiss when something grabbed Mary’s arm and yanked it behind her and it screamed, shaking the room and knocking the couch – John still on it – back several feet. John was standing before he even realized he was free, and Jim fell abruptly to his feet, and John was trying to make sense of what he was seeing: Bobby with what looked like a poker, the end of it pressed into Mary’s forearm, which was _smoking_ , and now he could smell burning flesh. 

“Bobby! No!” John screamed, and dived toward them, but then Jim tackled him and held him to the ground. 

The demon screamed again, and turned on Bobby with horrific intent on its distorted face, and Bobby grabbed a fistful of Mary’s golden hair and spun her around by it, then let go so abruptly he fell to the ground, where he scuttled backward like a crab. 

The demon roared, and Mary’s face was unrecognizable. Her head snapped back and her mouth opened wide, and John expected to see black smoke pour out of it, but nothing came. Panting, the demon looked down at its arm.

“Son of a bitch,” it said. “Bobby Singer, you fucker.”

The demon was under the Devil’s Trap, and upon Mary’s arm was what John could now see was a binding symbol. It wasn’t going anywhere.

* * * 

“I’m going to kill her, you know,” it told them casually. “And you just try sending me to hell. Think someone like me can’t find a way back out? Oh, it’s going to be a personal pleasure to slowly slaughter each one of you. And don’t think I’ll miss sweet little Dean. I’m torn, though. Should I just eat that tender, sweet thing up, or should I take him under my wing? What do you think, Daddy John?” It smiled at him with Mary’s sweet lips.

“I think you’re never going to lay eyes on my son,” John said, chest heaving, as Jim let him go and they climbed to their feet. Jim gave Bobby a hand up, and they stood outside the circle and stared at the demon.

“We ain’t just sendin’ you to hell,” Bobby told it grimly. “We’re binding you there. Have fun with eternity.”

Something flickered across the demon’s face – uncertainty, for just a second. Then the evil little smirk returned. 

“Mary’s mad as hell,” it said matter-of-factly. “She thinks you’re the three stupidest sons-of-bitches on the planet. I have to agree.”

“She’ll get over it,” John said. 

“Mm-mm,” the demon said. “And you know just how to work that magic, don’t you, John? Boy – you two together? No wonder Dean’s such a little pistol.”

“Don’t say my son’s name,” John hissed, and took a step toward the circle. Jim pulled him back. 

“Bobby,” Jim said, “start.”

Bobby looked at them, then back at Mary in the Devil’s Trap. “Not so easy,” he said. 

“What’s wrong?” Jim asked.

Bobby shook his head. “I put that symbol there to keep it from jumping ship the second I touched it,” he said. “Needed to get it in the trap, didn’t think much beyond that.”

“And now you have to break it,” Jim said. 

The demon laughed. “Told you,” it said. “Stupidest sons-of-bitches on the planet. But, hey, come on in here with me. I’ll show you a good time.”

Jim was grim-faced. He took John by the arm. “Come with me,” he said. “Bobby, watch her. Don’t get too close.”

Bobby nodded, but John dug his heels in. “Where?” he demanded, and Jim tightened his grip and physically hauled him into the kitchen.

Bobby had a pile of iron chains on the floor. Jim filled a pitcher with water and blessed it, then dumped a liberal amount of salt into it. 

“What do you think you’re going to do with that?” John asked as Jim poured the contents of the pitcher over the chains.

“We’re going to hold her down and tie her up,” Jim said. “Then we’re going to burn that symbol off and do the binding exorcism.”

John felt sick suddenly, knees watery and cold sweat beading out. He shook his head. “Maybe we should just pull her out, break the symbol,” he said. “I bet the thing just books first chance.”

“Maybe,” Jim said, “but that’s it, then. You know that, right, John? Nothing left to do but wait for it to collect.”

John put his hand over his eyes. “It’ll kill her, we try to put those chains on her,” he said.

Jim gently removed his hand from his face. “It’s probably going to kill her anyway,” he said. “The exorcism itself is probably going to kill her. But this is the only way forward, John. It’s not just Mary. You need to think about Dean now.”

John took a shaky breath, thought about tying Mary up with these horrible chains, burning her already-burnt flesh off, forcing her body through the agony of an exorcism. He thought about Dean, patting his face, saying, “Daddy.” 

He could do this.

He helped Jim carry the chains back to the living room.

“Oh,” the demon said, eyes lighting up, “fun and games!” It clapped its hands and bounced up and down lightly.

Jim got a length of chain in his hands, stood before the demon. John and Bobby flanked him, lengths of chain in their hands as well. 

“My, my,” it purred, “you boys aren’t so dull as I thought. Come on, then.”

Jim surged forward, into the trap, and reached to whip the chain around Mary, but the demon had him down in a second, hands around his throat, chortling ghoulishly. John let go of his part of the chain and jumped on Mary’s back, trying to get her hands off Jim’s neck. She bucked, trying to unseat him and laughing wildly. 

“Ride ‘em, cowboy!” it yelled. “Yee haw!”

A blast of cold water fell over all three of them, and John knew it was holy water, but Mary’s skin didn’t steam. 

“Oh, come on,” the demon said in exasperation, tightening its grip around Jim’s neck. “You’re in the big leagues now. All that does is piss me off.”

Jim’s face was bright red, and his tongue came out of his mouth. His eyes were starting to glaze. John desperately pried at Mary’s fingers, and managed to get one off the neck. He yanked it back hard, and heard the bone break.

“Careful, John,” the demon admonished. “That’ll get you arrested for spousal abuse.”

“John!” Bobby said, and he looked up just in time to let go and catch the length of chain Bobby tossed at him. He dropped it over Mary’s head and shoulders, slid the loop up and rolled off her back, and then Bobby took in the slack and _pulled_.

Mary came off of Jim with a scream of fury and surprise. She squirmed around on the ground like a fish out of water. John crawled to Jim, got his hands in the other man’s armpits, and dragged him out of the trap.

“You bastards!” the demon screamed. “You bastards! I’m going to hunt your families for the next millennia! I’m going to wipe your lines off the face of the planet! I’ll eat your fucking brats! I’m going to kill everyone who’s ever fucking smiled at you, do you hear me?”

Jim’s eyes were half-lidded, but he was breathing, harsh, labored breaths. John propped him up against an armchair and Jim, boneless and speechless, gave him a slight nod. 

Bobby had the poker, the end glowing red-hot. “Ready?” he said grimly to John, who nodded. 

He leapt into the circle directly onto Mary and tried to hold her still. She thrashed and twisted against him, and he tightened his grip so that Bobby could get to her forearm. When Bobby put the hot poker against the existing burn, the demon screamed, surged forward, and sunk Mary’s teeth into John’s cheek.

He screamed in pain, feeling blood spurt down his face. “Jesus!” he yelled, and Mary turned her head and spat out a hunk of his flesh.

“Hardly,” it hissed, and spit his own blood in his face.

He bolted back instinctively, falling on his ass, and then Bobby had him by the collar and was pulling him out of the circle. The demon in Mary’s skin grinned at them, displaying blood-stained teeth.

“Better make it snappy,” it said maniacally, and slammed Mary’s head into the floor. It did it again, and a rivulet of blood began to trickle from Mary’s forehead. 

“Bobby,” John said, his voice shaking. “Bobby, now.”

Bobby started spouting Latin phrases. The demon beat Mary’s head on the floor, the wide grin never leaving her face, which was quickly covered completely in blood. It flowed over her eyes until John couldn’t see them anymore.

From behind him, he heard Bobby say the final words. Mary rolled onto her back, and her body convulsed forward as black smoke poured from her mouth and up into the ceiling. Then she fell to the ground with a lifeless thud.

“Mary?” John said, and she lay limp and unresponsive. He was still on the floor, and he rolled over and went to her on his hands and knees. He gathered her chain-wrapped, battered body to him, and wiped blood off her face with a hand until he could see her. 

“Mary,” he said again, and then he was sobbing. He rocked her gently and put his ravaged cheek on her battered head. “Mary.”

* * * 

John didn’t know, nor care, what story Bobby had concocted for the cops. They’d unchained Mary’s limp body, and Bobby had announced she had a pulse before he called an ambulance. 

Paramedics came and put her on a gurney, and taped a wad of gauze over John’s check, and put an ice pack on Jim’s neck before putting him on a gurney as well. They wouldn’t let John ride in the ambulance, and he had a vague recollection of shaking one of the paramedics, preparing to hit him, and of Bobby pulling him away and into Bobby’s truck, of following the flashing lights through the dark night to the hospital. 

He knew that he waited in a too-bright room for too long, and when they finally took him back they just put him on his own gurney and stitched up his face. Bobby came back with him, never took his eyes from John.

Someone came and told them Jim would be all right, but they would keep him for the night to be sure. Bobby asked about Mary and they said they’d find out. 

Someone else gave John a shot, then another shot, and he was exhausted, couldn’t keep his head on his shoulders, and Bobby eased him back onto the gurney and pulled the blanket up.

“Mary,” John said numbly, and Bobby nodded.

“I ain’t goin’ anywhere,” he said. “I’ll find out about her. You need to rest now.”

“Dean,” John mumbled, eyes drooping shut. “Check on Dean.”

“Sure,” Bobby said, and John was out.

* * * 

Mary didn’t wake for three days. She didn’t look like his Mary, not because her face was bruised and distorted, not because her eyes swelled until they were completely shut, but because she looked so small in that white bed, when his Mary always seemed immense to him, and because she was so still underneath those tubes and wires, and his Mary was always moving. 

John took up station at the hard, uncomfortable chair beside her bed and refused to leave, even at the threat of hospital security. He stayed there for two days, and was only persuaded to go back to Bobby’s and rest by the arrival of Dean.

He was in Ellen Harvelle’s arms, and he was clutching at her, uncertain of the strange hospital waiting room. He eyed his father skeptically when John held out his hands.

“Hey, Dean-o,” John said softly. “Guess I don’t look so hot.”

Dean studied him with wide eyes for a moment, then said, “Daddy,” and tilted toward him. John gathered him up and pressed that small body to him. Dean wrapped his arms around John’s neck, but then pulled back and softly patted the bandage over John’s check.

“Owie,” he said in awe, then, “I want Mommy.”

John kissed his head. “Mommy has an owie too, babe, and she can’t see you right now,” he said. “The doctors are going to make her better, though, so we just have to let them work and let her rest. All right, buddy?”

Dean nodded, buried himself in his father’s neck again. 

“Let Bobby take you home, John,” Ellen said. “I’m fresh, I’ll stay here with Mary for a while. You can rest and clean up, spend some time with Dean.” She reached out a hand and gently poked Dean’s ribs, and he squirmed and giggled.

John was terrified that something would happen with Mary while he was gone, but he couldn’t let go of Dean yet, so he gave in. 

* * *

John was back at her bedside, asleep, when she finally woke and gave a croaked, “John?” 

He shot up and reached for her hand before he was fully awake, and he could see blue slits watching him from those battered eyes. 

“Mary,” he said, and then he was crying in relief. “My God, Mary.” He squeezed her hand and kissed it. 

“Done?” Mary croaked, and John didn’t understand. 

“Let me call a nurse, get you some water,” he said, and started to rise, but she grabbed his wrist and squeezed it.

“Is it done?” she asked, a little clearer.

He took her hand in both of his. “It’s done,” he said. “It’s over. It worked, Mary. It worked. And you’re going to be fine.” He kissed her hand again. “You’ve got some kind of angels looking after you.”

Mary shuddered, and John’s forehead wrinkled. “What?” he asked, and Mary shook her head slightly. “Dunno,” she said, and blinked at him, then said, “Dean?”

“He’s fine,” John reassured her. “Ellen brought him up to Bobby’s. He misses you something fierce, but he’s fine, Mary. Nothing’s going to happen to him.”

“It worked?” Mary rasped, and John nodded firmly.

“It’s gone,” he said. “It’s not coming back. That demon can never hurt our family now. Your deal is over. He can’t collect. We’re safe.”

“Moloch?” Mary asked, seeking confirmation. “He’s gone for good?”

John clenched his jaw. “I never want to hear that name again,” he said. 

Mary scrutinized him, then nodded, and then tears began leaking out of her ruined eyes. John bent over the bed and kissed them away.


	5. Sweet By and By

In 1982, they bought a house of their own. John did some improvements, embedding permanent salt lines in the doors and windows. Mary drew a Devil’s Trap on the living room floor and then covered it with a rug. 

“We don’t have to raise Dean like this, you know,” John said to Mary as he carved wards into the lintels. “As a hunter, I mean.”

“I know,” Mary said, and pursed her lips thoughtfully. Then she shook her head. “As much as I’d love Dean to grow up not knowing what’s really out there, he needs to know. What we do, John, what we’ve done – we can’t have it coming back around on us and him not knowing what to do.”

John got off the stepstool and turned to her. “So we still do this?” he asked, and she smiled wryly. 

“You’re the one carving wards into our woodwork,” she said, and John smiled and shrugged, flipping the carver in his hand. 

“We are kind of good at it,” he said, and Mary leaned up to kiss him. 

“The best,” she said, so that settled that. 

* * *

In 1983, Sammy arrived, and Mary reached for him while the doctor was still holding him up, red and wet and squalling louder than a banshee. “Hello, Sammy,” she said when he was finally in her arms, her face radiant. “Hello, my love,” and she kissed his forehead.

John curved his arm around Mary’s back and looked into the infant’s face, now quiet and looking at them through squinted eyes. _We never have to worry about this child_ , he thought. 

It had been 10 years. Nothing came for them.

* * *

On November 2, 1983, John dreamed that he was back in the jungle.

The tree cover blocked out all sight of the stars and moon, and it was so dark at night that you could not see your hand in front of your face. When you were on watch, you sat and listened and tried not to look too hard, because if you did, you’d start imagining things coming in from all black sides, only to have them smear and fade as they approached. 

John sat cross-legged on watch, listening to the men around him breathe, listening to the night sounds of the jungle. He heard a rustle behind him and tipped his head that way to see if it would repeat, or if it had just been some creature passing along. The noise didn’t come again, and John relaxed, his hands easy on the rifle across his lap.

Warm breath puffed on his neck, and John froze. His entire body went rigid, but he was careful not to move even the slightest. 

The breath came again, and then there was a low, barely audible, growl. 

John stopped breathing, and willed himself to hold his bladder.

The creature behind him was silent for long, long minutes while John held his breath and clenched his rifle and did not move. Then there was a final, dismissive puff of breath on his neck, and a low grumbled grunt, and then one soft rusting noise as the tiger went on its way.

John let out his breath and collapsed forward onto his rifle. He was shaking all over, and it was a long time before he could sit back up.

* * *

With a gasp, John sat up in bed. The house was dark and quiet, and Mary was asleep beside him. He was sweating, and he ran a hand over his face and got quietly out of bed. 

In Vietnam, the morning after the tiger, John’s compatriots had accused him of falling asleep on watch and having a really strange dream. As they set out, though, one of them had called out and pointed, and they had all gathered around the huge footprints in the brush, coming right up to where John had sat on watch. 

John used the toilet and got himself a glass of water. He checked on Dean, and then on Sammy, but both boys were sleeping soundly. He checked on Mary again, and she was still asleep. 

There were no tiger tracks, nothing ominous in the house. Just a dream.

Figuring he wasn’t going back to sleep anytime soon, John threw on his bathrobe and went downstairs. He plopped down in his recliner and found a movie on the television, one of those old war movies his dad had liked. 

He turned the volume down low and put his feet up. His pulse slowed down and his eyes started to sag. _Should go upstairs_ , he thought, but was too comfortable to move. He fell asleep.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Crossbones Podfic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/941259) by [Baylor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baylor/pseuds/Baylor)




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